How Could We Have Known

that loneliness is like 
the whole of the moon 
rising in a sky so lucent, 
the clouds cast shadows 
and make the night 
suddenly aware of darkness; 

that loneliness is the comfort only 
a running man feels when his body 
repents of its image of god, 
when his heart cries out darkly: don’t 
leave me, don’t leave me behind, 
but the running man runs alone; 

that loneliness is balanced 
on a line stretching fine and thin, 
the darkened one which holds all things 
angled, axled, and endlessly spinning, 
defining this odd symmetry, 
this abbreviated gift of flesh.